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Nokia Lumia 620 Hands On Impressions

Nokia has all but embraced Windows Phone as its primary Operating System. After all, the flagship devices of Nokia such as the Lumia 920, Lumia 900 are all running WP. Apart from Pure View 808, it seems like Nokia has relegated Symbian to pretty much the OS for cheaper smart phones which are all about being pocket friendly. However, this does not mean Nokia has not tried to bring out budget Windows Phone devices to the market. In fact, Nokia is probably the only manufacturer on the planet who is constantly working on budget Windows devices. We had the Lumia 710, Lumia 610 and even the Lumia 510 which provided a great entry into the Windows Phone Ecosystem for those who just want to try out and get a feel of Windows Phone.

Nokia while announcing the Lumia 920 and 820 which are the first two devices from the company to run the latest WP 8 OS right out of the box also announced a budget friendly Lumia 620. The device has not been officially launched in India yet, but we could get some hands on time with the device at one of the retailers today. The phone was on sale for about Rs. 15,000, so we can expect the final price of the device to be somewhere around the 15K mark, even though we would have liked it to be more around the 13,000 figure. However, having played with the device a bit, here are our first impressions:

Operating System: Lumia 620 would be the first budget phone from Windows to run Windows Phone 8 which means all the latest updates and goodness would be supported in this device. The direct comparison of the device would be made with the HTC 8S. However, from strictly OS point of view the Lumia 620 would win the battle hands down thanks to some exclusive apps such as City Lens and other Nokia goodness, even though the 8S is a much better designed device.

Design: The Lumia 620 unlike the Lumia 920 feels pretty light in weight. It weighs around 127 grams, and with curved edges at the corner the phone has a great feel to it. It has a 3.8 inch display with Clear black technology and WVGA resolution. The screen on the device definitely impressed us much more than either the Lumia 510 or 610. In fact using the phone in direct sunshine was a pleasure, the viewing angles were good without being spectacular. But considering the range of the device, the Lumia 620 is very well designed and has a good build quality.

Performance: The presence of a very capable, dual Core 1GHz Krait CPU meant things were very snappy on the device. You certainly experience how speedy things are when you try and load the same application of both the Lumia 620 and one of the older Lumia devices running WP 7.5. In fact a basic application such as Whatsapp was far more responsive on the Lumia 620 than the Lumia 710. Also, the Lumia 620 in general performed well in multi tasking. It handled it without any lag and the applications were running in the back ground instead of resetting. Even though this is a standard WP 8 feature, we did find that the Lumia 620 handled it very well and there was very little loading time even when we had a few applications running in the background.

Camera: Camera was one feature that we perhaps expected a little more from Nokia than what is on board of Lumia 620. Even though the camera performed a little better than the HTC 8S due to a larger aperture but the lack of Carl Zeiss Lens on the 5 Mega Pixel shooter gave very average pictures in broad day light. LED flash is present on the device meaning you can use the phone for night time shooting but the performance again was very average. There is also a front facing camera with VGA resolution which would help you use Skype or other apps such as Tango for Video chat. the quality again is average but sufficient for a decent call. The device could capture 720 P videos at 30 FPS but we were not very happy with the quality of audio recorded on the device.

Battery Backup: The battery on the Lumia 620 is rated at 1300 mAH which is really low in our view. The phone lost quite a bit of juice as we attempted to download just a few apps over 3G and place a couple of calls. An extra 200 mAH could have made a world of difference. However, we cannot comment on the overall usage until we review the device over a longer period of time.

Storage Space: The phone ships with 8 GB inbuilt storage. However, there is extension possible thanks to a Micro SD slot on the device giving us another 32 GB to play with unlike the older Lumia range of devices.

Overall Impressions: On the whole, we liked the Lumia 620. The phone felt very solid in hands, and the reception was good too. The speakers did well when tested with some classical rock music. We loved the color options the device sells with, we may as well pick a yellow one for our personal use just for something different. If Nokia does decide to price the phone aggressively in India, the device has all the makings to be a hit. However, if you are somebody who is looking for a device that has better overall design and a little more premium feel, then the Lumia 620 may not be for you. For a rugged use though and just an entery level phone, and very capable performance the Lumia 620 gets our thumbs up.

So these were our first impressions of the device, we would be coming up with a full video review of the device soon once we have used the phone for an extended period. Do let us know your views about the Lumia 620 in the section below or tweet in to us at @Blogtechnika or @Techverarp.

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